Ever since I was old enough to read books on philosophy, I have
been intrigued by the discussions on the nature of man. The
philosophers have been debating for years about whether man is
primarily good or primarily evil, whether he is primarily
altruistic or selfish, cooperative or combative, gregarious or
self-centered, whether he enjoys free will or whether everything
is predetermined.

As far back as the Socratic dialogues in Plato, and even before
that, man has been baffled about himself. He knows he is capable
of great and noble deeds, but then he is oppressed by the
evidence of great wrongdoing.

And so he wonders. I don’t presume to be able to resolve the
contradictions. In fact, I don’t think we have to. It seems to
me that the debate over good and evil in man, over free will and
determinism, and over all the other contradictions—it seems to
me that this debate is a futile one. For man is a creature of
dualism. He is both good and evil, both altruistic and selfish.
He enjoys free will to the extent that he can make decisions in
life, but he can’t change his chemistry or his relatives or his
physical endowments—all of which were determined for him at
birth. And rather than speculate over which side of him is
dominant, he might do well to consider what the contradictions
and circumstances are that tend to bring out the good or evil,
that enable him to be a nobler and responsible member of the
human race. And so far as free will and determinism are
concerned, something I heard in India on a recent visit might be
worth passing along. Free will and determinism, I was told, are
like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents
determinism. The way you play your hand represents free will.

Now where does all this leave us? It seems to me that we ought
to attempt to bring about and safeguard those conditions that
tend to develop the best in man. We know, for example, that the
existence of fear and man’s inability to cope with fear bring
about the worst in him. We know that what is true of man on a
small scale can be true of society on a large scale. And today
the conditions of fear in the world are, I’m afraid, affecting
men everywhere. More than 2,300 years ago, the Greek world,
which had attained tremendous heights of creative intelligence
and achievement, disintegrated under the pressure of fear.
Today, too, if we read the signs correctly, there is fear
everywhere. There is fear that the human race has exhausted its
margin for error and that we are sliding into another great
conflict that will cancel out thousands of years of human
progress. And people are fearful because they don’t want to lose
the things that are more important than peace itself—moral,
democratic, and spiritual values.

The problem confronting us today is far more serious than the
destiny of any political system or even of any nation. The
problem is the destiny of man: first, whether we can make this
planet safe for man; second, whether we can make it fit for man.

This I believe—that man today has all the resources to shatter
his fears and go on to the greatest golden age in history, an
age which will provide the conditions for human growth and for
the development of the good that resides within man, whether in
his individual or his collective being. And he has only to
mobilize his rational intelligence and his conscience to put
these resources to work.

Norman Cousins was editor of The Saturday Review for 35 years. A
noted author, he detailed his fight against two life-threatening
diseases in "Anatomy of An Illness" and "The Healing Heart." In
addition to his literary career, he was an ardent critic of the
nuclear arms race and the Vietnam War.